Eel muscle could be the first step towards human-generated electricity

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Fish with exotic powers have long captured the imagination. Alessandro Volta noted striking similarity between electric fish and the voltaic piles from which he made the first effective battery. Although structurally similar to batteries, the electric organs (EO) of the fish who wield them are operationally more like the Marx generators. New research just published in Science expands our knowledge of the basic operating principles of these fantastic electro-muscles and, if we stretch it a bit, hints at the potential to harness their power for ourselves.

If you want to fully understand all the ins and outs of electric organs you’ll need to check into hotel Wikipedia for a fairly lengthy stay. But, in a nutshell, to make one of these Marx generators you wire up a bank of capacitors in parallel for a leisurely charging, and then short the resistors between them with a switch that suddenly (and near simultaneously) reroutes them into a series configuration. This brings a rapid discharge and delivery of a high-voltage pulse. These simple voltage multiplier circuits can be found in everything from laser printers to cathode ray tubes.

The same basic scheme is used by Amazonian freshwater electric eels (technically they are air-breathing fishes rather than eels) to generate 2 ms pulses at 600 volts and up to 1 amp of current. While the electric eel is the voltage king, all kinds of other fish have managed to cobble together their own version of the undersea cattle-prod. Several species of catfish have even gone all electric. Most of these other guys only hit a couple hundred volts, but in their conductive salt-water environment, their biobattery generally doesn’t need as much to do the job. The Greeks were particularly found of electric fish, and reportedly used the electric charms of rays or skates to numb patients for surgery and to treat any number of ailments.

The basic unit of the electric organ is called an electrocyte. These specialized muscle cells are generally larger than smooth or striated muscle units. Having dispensed with most of the contractile machinery of ordinary muscle cells (like actins and myosins) they do not move when they get the signal from above. What these cells do have are ion pumps and channels — lots of them. They also have around ten times the number of synaptic exciter nodes as standard muscle. These electrocytes top out at a voltage of around 150mv per cell, beyond that there seems to be diminishing returns as their membranous insulators begin to fail.

The key to building a successful electric organ is to properly sum and channel these voltages. All vertebrates have ample experience in doing this within the conduction system of their hearts. The researchers found that some of the extracellular matrix proteins (the collagens and other scaffolding proteins that link cells together) used in the heart have also been repurposed for use in the electric organ.

The researchers also did a full transcriptome analysis (basically a DNA sequencing spreadsheet that indicates what proteins are expressed) of six completely different families of electric fish. In a remarkable example of convergent evolution, they found that all six used the same protein components for construction and signaling within the EO. We should note that contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, these fairly generic discoveries neither “explain” the evolution nor the development of the EO, they only give some clues about it. More sobering, at the end of the day, one man’s convergent magic is another man’s evolutionary common sense.

With all the hype these days about building artificial livers or lungs from stem cells one might naturally wonder if we could build our own implant charging organ. Perhaps plug it into the vasculature at some regulatable point, maybe somewhere within the abdominal cavity. Other schemes by contrast, like stealing some of the brain’s glucose circulating in the cerebral spinal fluid to power implants look dodgy at best. The enzyme based methods which oxidize glucose only last a short while before needing to be replenished. Other glucose-based methods using platinum, which will happily strip electrons from glucose all day, may not be the ideal biomaterial.

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This brings a rapid discharge and delivery of a high-voltage pulse. These simple voltage multiplier circuits can be found in everything from laser printers to cathode ray tubes. http://tr.im/5ntlz

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brenro

I’ll apologize in advance: this story is shocking.

vfxant

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ugh

http://ziffdavis.com/ sal cangeloso

Awesome/incredible that the eel can shock prey without frying itself, had never thought that that process.

Jerk Face

It seems to me that scientists should have figured out that the electric eel could be the key to unlocking the secrets of tissue generating electricity many moons ago…..

CrustyToenail

“Assuming these details could be worked out…ability to shock our friends at the pool.” Fun pool party idea based on a lot of assumptions, no?

jhewitt123

yes indeed, watch it happen

Techutante

It’ll go well with the gills they give us when the sea floods the globe and we all have to live underwater. =p

Dalton Kanerva

I’m trying to create a prosthetic thumb that would be powered by something I produce, I have only one kidney and am thinking that might work for a electro organ, I fully agree that the glucose is a stretch, this is making a lot more sense and would love feedback on my following question, could it power a robotic thumb and could I use the many electro pulses used for movement to activate flow of charge? If you are willing to help me you can contact me at d.kanerva@yahoo.com

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